“Not that I want to be near you. You know I don’t like you, right?”

“Uh, what?”

“I just think it would be pleasant to have some kind of non-sentient representation of myself floating out there in the world.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, not sentient? Like it doesn’t have any self-awareness or consciousness? The llama?”

“Yeah, I know what the word means.”

“Oh, right, you went to grad school. I forgot you went to grad school.”

Megan wiped and flushed and tried to use the flush sound to symbolically rid herself of the fantasy of saying something to Carrie about the llama.

“Show this guy a picture of your llama,” she said while she washed her hands. “Show this guy that picture of your llama.” Since it would make her feel better, she let herself cry whenever she wanted to. She put her head in her arms and her arms on the bathroom wall. When she finished, she washed her face and shook her fist at her reflection.

“I’ll get you!” said Megan.

God, I’m hilarious, she thought.

She walked back down the hallway and the hallway didn’t exist.

Everything about her life was so much the same from day to day that it almost didn’t exist.

RANDY DIDN'T GET what the big deal was about Jillian. He didn’t think she sounded like a liar, and he thought Megan was blowing things out of proportion. He’d suggested this once.

“Megan, do you think you’re re-directing your dissatisfaction with your job onto Jillian?”

She’d said, “Fuck you.”

Randy was sitting at his computer desk at home. He was confident that Megan’s Carrie thing was fleeting, despite her display last night, and he decided not to edit himself to accommodate her.

Megan opened the door.

“Hey,” said Randy.

Megan slipped out of her bag, coat, and shoes and then took off her skirt, tights, underpants, sweater, and bra on her walk to the bedroom. She got into pajamas, put her hair in a stupid-looking ponytail, and said, “Hey,” as she sat down at the kitchen table.

Randy started by mentioning some design work of Carrie’s that he’d seen.

“Hmm,” said Megan.

He had the magazine he’d seen it in, and he brought it to her, opened to the correct page. He took a seat.

“Oh, wow,” said Megan. She picked up the magazine and dropped it back down on the table.

“I think it’s really cool,” said Randy.

“Sure. It looks like everything else, if that’s what you mean by cool.”

“No, I mean, this is really professional work. It’s cool that it’s done by someone we know.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“It’s just a formula. I don’t feel honored to know a formula. Only one in, I don’t know, ten thousand designers are real artists. I don’t know any designers who’ve been artists since Bauhaus, and they were fighting Nazis with their designs, not . . . imported produce or whatever.”